Much has been written about the poverty and destitution that existed in the Gorbals for much of the 20th century, but only those who lived or worked there at that time can truly know the hardships that were faced.
Enter Doctor of Medicine George Gladstone Robertson, who after graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1923, opened a GP practice in the Gorbals. While he was there, tending to the notoriously impoverished district's ill and needy, Dr Robertson recorded his experiences in meticulous detail.
Decades later, in 1970, Dr Robertson's findings were published in a book, 'Gorbals Doctor'. In it he tells of a life's work dedicated to medicine and of the hardships endured by his patients living in the slums.
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Described as "grim" but "fascinating reading", the book was praised for its candid documentation of the squalid living conditions that faced Gorbals residents half a century earlier.
Dr Robertson describes one of the most deprived blocks at 197 Centre Street, where "over two hundred people were crowded together in this miserable and hellish tenement".
In the 1920s, the Gorbals was home to more than 85,000 people, all crammed into an area that covered just two per cent of Glasgow. Unemployment was rife and many resorted to alcoholism and crime. It was a dangerous place to be - especially late at night.
In one passage Dr Robertson details the sad sights he would often encounter on his evening visits to residents' dwellings.
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He wrote: "The eerie sounds and flickering shadows of the gas lights were only minor obstacles with which I had to contend on my night visits.
"Men, and sometimes women, too drunk to crawl through their own doorways, lay in the passages. Some I managed to avoid, but more often than not, I would stumble and trip over a sprawling figure to be greeted on some occasions by a stream of oaths from the body I had jerked back into consciousness.
"This was humanity living at its lowest level and the drunks strewn in untidy heaps, many of them lying in their own vomit, would soon become a shameful symbol of the Gorbals, and bring a stigma on Glasgow which the city would find difficult to erase."
But while the Gorbals' social ills were well-known, it would take decades for the problems to be addressed.
In the 1960s, the old slum tenement blocks were fast disappearing for modern flats and high-rise developments as the authorities sought to improve the lives of residents.
With the publication of his book in May 1970, Dr Robertson returned to the Gorbals and was photographed by Sunday Mirror press photographers in one of area's few surviving tenement back courts.
The photos show him speaking with groups of youngsters in a derelict stretch of the Gorbals that had yet to receive the urban renewal treatment.
Click on the gallery link below to view the pictures, taken on May 26, 1970.
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